Hopefully our baby figs will survive tonight's frost! March 26th, 2012.

A mild Winter and early Spring for the Mid-Atlantic region has had an excellent effect on the flora.  Our March temperatures have been in the high 60’s and 70’s, even up into the 80’s.  Overnight frosts have thankfully stayed away thus far.  The Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C. bloomed two weeks earlier than usual, the grass is already waiting for the second mow of the season and our fruit trees (as you can see in the Hardy Chicago fig on the left) have not only broken dormancy, but are growing fruit!

Update: Tonight the temperatures are forecast to drop into the high 20’s!  Darn the late March freeze!  It will be windy, too.  This type of advection frost resists most known and applicable frost prevention techniques.  Temperatures dropping below 29˚F can damage budding and flowering plants.  At only 27˚F you begin to see 90% kill rates.  We’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope that our fig location is good and our other fruit trees are resilient!

What’s Budding Early?

An early Spring is a brilliant time to be working the soil full of compost, manure and peat, developing the light, crumbly loam that our vegetables love so much.  The ground is soft with rain and full of earthworms, making new plantings an easy endeavor.  Tomato, pepper and luffa seedlings are outside in the perfectly overcast and drizzly days getting used to the climate and hardening off.  By the looks of the current weather pattern, those seedlings will go in the ground in a week, making this the earliest planting season in the Suburban Hayseed’s experience!

Mild winters and an early spring can be a blessing and a challenge.  If you have planned well and prepared early, you can take advantage of the weather and get a several week jump on summer.  Your plants will have developed a strong and deep root system by the time they get baked in the dog days.  Your Early Girl tomatoes might share their fruit a month before you usually get it.  And my favorite, your fruiting trees, bushes and vines will have you making pies that much faster!  That is, provided the late frost doesn’t sneak in and wreak your work!

Two days ahead of our potential frost I tried out the macro ability of my iPhone to take some pictures of the state of plants in the Washington D.C. metro area.  Here’s to hoping all of this beauty survives to flourish!

Bleeding Hearts are only about a foot tall so far and are blooming bountifully.

The apple blossoms thankfully have not yet opened.

Berries are already forming on this Weeping Mulberry

Oh, hoary frost of late onset, please stay away.  Let the night be cool, not frozen. May the buds of this year’s plenty stay snug by the warmth of the day.

~The Suburban Hayseed